By Mark Budman

Little Red Riding Hood was driving her Meals on Wheels car through the forest when she saw the Big Bad Wolf standing by his truck, trying to fix a flat. Big mouth and belly, puny paws. Pathetic. He didn’t even wear a mask. Asshole. MAGA hat and a backpack, probably with the supply of hydroxychloroquine. Trumpkin. Yet she reminded herself that she had a heart of gold. And she remembered her motto “Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain.”

She stopped and pulled her mask up her nose.

“Let me help you,” she said.

“But you’re just a girl.”

She disregarded this misogynistic remark and fixed the flat for him.

“Where you’re heading, ma’am?” he asked while she was dusting off her jeans with his bushy tail.

Her fist impulse was to send him for a sexual adventure with himself, but since he looked so hapless, she told him the truth. “To a poor rural Grandmother Mrs. Gloriana Vanderbilt to deliver her a nutritious vegetarian meal.”

While Little Red Riding Hood hugged a couple of trees and connected with her inner goddess, internally, The Big Bad Wolf took a shortcut, broke into poor rural Grandmother shack and swallowed her. He put on the poor Grandmother clothing: pink polyester shorts, white tank top, and flip-flops. He lay down into the recently deceased’s bed and waited for Little Red Riding Hood, passing time by listening to the rumbling in his belly.

When she arrived, he was so hungry that he didn’t let her ask any questions and swallowed her, too, together with her six yang and six yin meridians. He spit the inner goddesses, though, since he found her too bitterly enraged. But before he swallowed her, Little Red Riding Hood managed to break his left paw, smashed his canines, trampled his MAGA hat and supply of hydroxychloroquine, and dialed 911. A licensed clinical social worker, a former woodcutter, arrived. He had abandoned his previous job because of environmental concerns.

“Do you know that meat consumption is considered one of the prime factors contributing to the current sixth mass extinction?” he said.

“No, I didn’t know that.” The Wolf’s ears and cheeks turned red.

The social worker went on: “Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and causes immense animal suffering.”

The Wolf couldn’t take it anymore. He regurgitated both Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother and all four shared the nutritious vegetarian meal. The Wolf had no choice since he lost his canines. The rest of diners had no choice because rejecting a vegetarian meal is shameful. The licensed clinical social worker recorded the feast, and it went viral. Only little kids were afraid of the Big Bad Wolf after that, and only when no one had seen them. Because fear of shaming is stronger than fear of wolves.

As for Little Red Riding Hood, she eventually married Cinderella, who divorced her prince when she found that he came from a long line of “discoverers,” i.e. colonizers, royal pain in the ass, and misogynistic animals.